


Dear Traveler

by avislightwing



Series: Jester's Second First Kisses [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nail Polish, Sleepovers, and I will take that to my grave, brief mention of Nott-typical body image issues, jester wants her friends to be happy 2k19, just enough to uphold my Brand(TM), just for like a second though, more or less, tieflings are basically cats when it comes to their tails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 04:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17338748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: Jester tells the Traveler everything, especially about her friends, and especially one friend who she loves very much and maybe - maybe - thinks is very pretty.





	Dear Traveler

“Dear Traveler,” Jester said. She was lying on her tummy on her bed, and she had her sketchbook open, and she was using some very pretty paints that Caleb had _bought_   for her last time they were at the markets to draw bea-oo-tee-ful pictures for the Traveler. “I had a good day, mostly, and I put one of your little statues that I made in a place no one would expect it.” She gave a happy little wriggle, and her spaded tail curled over her shoulder. She had put the tiny hooded figure right on top of the sign of the bookstore Caleb had dragged her to, to buy the paints and also lots of paper, of course. It was right at tiefling eye level, but you couldn’t see it unless you turned just the right way, and then there it was. “I am going to have a sleepover with my friend Nott, you remember Nott, I tell you about her allllllll the time, I am doing that tonight. Maybe we are going to talk about our detective agency, and I got lots of pastries, and nail polish because it’s pretty and I think Nott likes being pretty.”

Jester screwed up her face and added more yellow to Nott’s eyes on the page. “I don’t think she thinks she’s pretty, I think,” she told the Traveler. “Just because she is a goblin, but I think that’s silly. All sorts of people can be pretty. Humans like Beau and half-orcs like Fjord and firbolgs like Caduceus and tieflings like me. Well, obviously tieflings because my mama is a tiefling and she is the _most_   beautiful person in the _world_ ,  but I am just _saying_   that like, she says her pointy teeth are scary, but I have pointy teeth too, and Fjord has his eensy-weensy tusks, so it isn’t that. Or her eyes, but Fjord has yellow eyes too, and Molly had really glowy red eyes. And she is green, but so is Fjord.” Jester chewed thoughtfully on the end of her paintbrush, the part that didn’t have paint all over it. “Fjord and Nott have a lot in common, but they fight a lot. That’s funny.”

There’s a knock on the door. “Come in!” Jester sang out, and the door cracked open, and Nott scuttled in, clutching bottles of nail polish.

“Is Beau going to be here tonight?” Nott asked.

“Nooooo, she has some boring thing she wanted to go to,” Jester said with a pout. “It doesn’t even involve beating anyone up, I think, which I don’t know why it would be fun if no one is getting beat up. Or getting their nails painted. Did you bring the book?”

“Ah, yes,” Nott said, hopping up on the bed. She set down a ragged towel – stained from when they painted their nails before and Jester maybe spilled the bottle a little bit – the bottles, and a book that she got from the bookstore when they were there earlier. “It’s a different one, not _Tusk Love_ ,  see?” Nott said in her creaky voice, pointing at the cover. A half-orc was batting her eyelashes at a swooning tiefling lady in her arms. “They’re both girls, I hope that’s okay.”

“We’re both girls!” Jester pointed out brightly. “It looks really good, Nott, thanks!”

“Oh, ah, no problem,” Nott said. “What do you want to do first? We have pastries, and the nail polish, and the book. Or we could just talk. Like, girl talk.”

“I love girl talk,” Jester said, bouncing slightly in place, her tail whipping from side to side and almost hitting the headboard of the bed. “I don’t get to girl talk with _anyone_ ,  Beau likes punching people too much and Yasha is so quiet and Caduceus isn’t a girl, though I don’t think he is maybe all the way a boy either,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “And Caleb and Fjord are boys.”

“Okay, how about I paint your nails, and we play… Truth or Dare?” Nott suggested.

Jester clapped her hands. “Oh, I like that game! I haven’t played it much, just once or twice or maybe zero times because one time I played it with the Traveler but he wasn’t actually there so it was really just me and I dared myself to climb up the roof and I did it.” Jester giggled. This was going to be fun.

“All right, you go first, then,” Nott said, unscrewing a bottle of sparkly red nail polish and taking one of Jester’s hands. Nott’s fingernails were sharp, Jester always noticed, but she was always very gentle with Jester. “Truth or dare?”

“Ummmm.” Jester grabbed her tail and held it in her lap so she wouldn’t accidentally knock over the nail polish while she was thinking. “Dare.”

Nott grinned. She wasn’t wearing her bandages or her mask tonight, and that made Jester happy, though she wasn’t quite sure why. She liked when Nott felt comfortable enough to show her whole entire face, no hood or anything, even. “I dare you to go ask Fjord if he wants his nails painted.”

Jester gasped, a scandalized sound. “Nott! He and Caleb are in your room tonight! They might be –” She lowered her voice. “ _Having seeeeex or something._ ”

“I know,” Nott said smugly.

“Okay okay, wait, I still have a third level spell slot, I can use Sending to do it,” Jester said, and scrunched up her nose. “Twenty-five words. Hello Fjord, it is Jester, Nott is painting my nails and she dared me to ask you if you wanted your nails painted too.”

 _Little busy at the mo’, Jester,_   Fjord’s reply came back after a second, and Jester squealed and jumped so hard she almost knocked the nail polish over anyways.

“No, no, don’t, I don’t want to hear it!” Nott said as soon as Jester opened her mouth. “No, ah, Truth. Wait, fuck, Dare –”

“You already said Truth,” Jester said, settling back in. “What is… the scariest thing that ever happened to you?”

“The day on the snake island,” Nott replied without hesitation. “Other hand.” Jester switched hands and blew on her nails. She wished she had Prestidigitation – she could dry them immediately with that. “It was really scary and the worst day of my entire life. I almost drowned.”

“I almost drowned too,” Jester said. “And then Fjord breathed air back into me and I didn’t.”

“Oh yeah,” Nott said. “Your first kiss.”

“Yeahhhh, well, it wasn’t _really_   my first kiss,” Jester said. “I mean, yes, it was, but he wasn’t really kissing me, you know, because I was drowning and stuff, and I needed air. And so that was nice, to have air again.”

“Has he kissed you again since?” Nott asked. “Or – oh, have you kissed him?”

“No, of course not,” Jester said scornfully. “All his kissing is going to Caleb, now, which is very nice, because I feel like Caleb probably needs lots and lots of kisses.”

“You got that right,” Nott said. “Do you want another dare?”

“I can’t do a lot of dares without messing up my nail polish,” Jester realized in disappointment.

“Just truths then?” Jester nodded. “All right,” Nott said. “Well, I sort of already asked you a question, about Fjord. So you can ask me one now, if you want.”

“Okay.” Jester glanced around, trying to come up with an idea, and her eyes landed on the book that wasn’t _Tusk Love_.  “Have you everrrrr… kissed another girl?” she asked Nott.

“No,” Nott said. “I’ve kissed a boy, though.”

Jester tilted her head to the side as Nott finished her last finger. “Would you ever want to kiss a girl?”

“It depends on the girl,” Nott said primly. “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”

Jester giggled. “That’s what Truth or Dare is, though, kissing and telling!”

“It’s not all about kissing,” Nott protested, but she was smiling too, and Jester could see all her sharp teeth. Really, Jester thought, Nott wasn’t ugly at all, even a little bit. Her skin was a very pretty shade of green, and her ears were big, and her hair would probably be really nice, when it was washed and stuff.

Nott was pretty.

“Do you want me to paint your nails now too?” Jester asked.

“No, you should at least wait for yours to dry,” Nott said, screwing the top back on the nail polish. “You can do mine after. My turn to ask.” She put the bottle in her pocket like she wasn’t thinking about it, then paused and took it out again. She made a funny face. At least, Jester thought it was funny. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be funny, though, because when Nott spoke again, her voice sounded weird. Jester thought it sounded a little like Caleb’s did right before he got really quiet for a long time.

“Why are you friends with me?” Nott asked.

“That’s your question?” Jester said, confused.

“Yeah,” Nott said. “Just. Answer it. Please.”

“I’m friends with you,” Jester said, “because I really like you, Nott. You’re funny and super smart, like, the smartest of any of us except for maybe Caleb –”

“No one’s smarter than Caleb,” Nott interrupted.

“Yeah, but you’re still _very_   smart,” Jester said insistently. “And you’re fun to talk to and you understand things, sometimes, and you listen to me. I _like_   you, Nott. Do you think we would be detectives together if I didn’t like you?”

“I don’t know,” Nott said. She grabbed her feet so she was all scrunched up. “Lots of people don’t like me. I steal shit and I drink a lot. You, ah, you don’t drink at all.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, though,” Jester scoffed. “I’m friends with everybody else and they drink too, except Caduceus. And Beau steals mail.”

“But I’m a _goblin_ ,” Nott burst out. “I’m green and ugly and horrible and –”

“Nott! Nott, Nott, Nott,” Jester said.

“Yes?” Nott said in a very small voice.

“Nott, I don’t care that you’re a goblin,” Jester said, and she tried to make her words sound true, because they were, and she was afraid Nott wasn’t going to believe her. “I mean, I hope someday you don’t have to be a goblin anymore because I want you to be happy, but I like you like this.”

“You do?” Nott said, and her voice was still so small, and Jester wanted so, so badly to make it big again.

“Yeah,” Jester said. “I think your ears are really nice, and I think it’s really cool how your eyes are yellow and they can get really big in the dark, and I think your skin is a nice color and I think your hair is really pretty.” Oops. She didn’t mean to say that one.

Nott’s ears lifted up a little. “You do?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jester said. “I think all of you is pretty, Nott.”

Nott crept a little closer to her, and Jester felt her heart beat a little faster. “Even my teeth?” she said, and bared them.

“Even your teeth,” Jester said, baring her own pointy tiefling teeth back. “…Do you think I’m pretty?”

“You’re very pretty, Jester,” Nott said, and her voice was soft, but it was a different kind of soft than before. It was a nice kind of soft, Jester thought, a soft she wanted to wrap herself in like a blanket. Nott came a few inches closer, and now she was almost in Jester’s lap, and Jester maybe wanted Nott to be in her lap, maybe.

“You know how I said I never kissed a girl?” Jester said, and she didn’t know what the word for scared and saying things anyway was but that was how she felt. _Traveler_ ,  she thought, _I hope you are helping out here because I don’t know what I’m doing but I think maybe it’s good._

“I do,” Nott said, and she crawled into Jester’s lap. She fit there, it seemed to Jester. Right between Jester’s round thighs, easy to hold.

Jester’s tail snuck forward and wound around Nott’s waist and Jester grabbed it. “Sorry,” she said.

“No,” Nott said. “It’s okay.”

And then Nott kissed her.

It was a little tricky with the sharp teeth and fangs and stuff, but Jester kissed her back, and maybe she was kissing a girl but she was also kissing _Nott_   and Nott was one of her best friends and her detective partner and that, Jester thought, was what made it a good kiss. She took Nott’s face in her hands, not worrying about the nail polish anymore, because she was worried maybe Nott would change her mind, that she would think that Jester didn’t actually want to kiss her, but Jester did very much. She very much wanted to kiss Nott and to keep kissing Nott.

“Wow,” Nott said when they finally stopped kissing because they had to breathe. That was funny, Jester thought – her last first kiss had been because she couldn’t breathe, but this time, it was the kiss that took all her breath away. “Wow, Jessie. That was really nice.” Nott was smiling really big now with all of her teeth, and that made Jester happy the same way Nott taking off her bandages and mask when they were together did.

“It was really nice for me, too,” Jester said. “Nott? Do you think, maybe –” She stopped and scrunched up her nose a little. Maybe she shouldn’t say the next part.

“What?” Nott asked, and she sounded a little anxious instead of happy like she was a second ago, so Jester thought she should probably say it anyways.

“Do you think maybe we could be girlfriends?” Jester asked, and her voice came out like a whisper and that seemed funny to her, so she started giggling.

That made Nott start giggling as well. “Girlfriends?” she said. “Like in the book I got today?”

“Yeah!” Jester said, more enthusiastically now. “We like each other a lot, and we like kissing each other, and I guess we’re _basically_   girlfriends already. And if we don’t like it we could stop.”

“That’s true,” Nott agreed. “That sounds nice.”

“I can take you on a date!” Jester exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “We can go to a pastry shop and I can buy you _so many_ – oh, I think we’re going to have to redo my nail polish. It got all messy.”

“Well, if yours is already ruined, you can do mine,” Nott said, putting the bottle in Jester’s hand. “Now we’re not just girl friends, we’re _girlfriends_.”

Jester was going to have so much to tell the Traveler, she thought. About nail polish and books and sleepovers and her _girlfriend_ ,  Nott the Brave. But for now, she painted Nott’s nails.

 

That night after Nott was asleep, curled up by Jester’s head, Jester opened her sketchbook again. “Dear Traveler,” Jester whispered. “I have a girlfriend and she is the prettiest person in the whole world, even if she doesn’t think so.” As she talked, Jester drew the sleepover into her sketchbook with her very prettiest paints: yellow for Nott’s eyes, green for Nott’s skin, and pink for Nott’s nails and the little heart Jester painted above her.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@birdiethebibliophile](birdiethebibliophile.tumblr.com) and yell at me about this good good rarepair


End file.
